Let us take a glimpse at primitive man. I choose the Marquesas Islands, because we have complete reports about them from numerous observers. Here was a race of people, not interfered with by civilization, who manifested all that overplus of sexual energy to which Metchnikoff calls attention. They placed no restraint whatever upon sex activity, they had no conception of such an idea. Their games and dances were sex play, and so also, in great part, was their religion. Yet we do not find that they wrecked themselves. Physically speaking, they were one of the most perfect races of which we have record. Both the men and women were beautiful; they were active and strong from childhood to old age, and--here is the significant thing--they were happy. They were a laughing, dancing, singing race. They hardly knew grief or fear at all. They knew how to live, and they enjoyed every process and aspect of their lives, just as children do, naively and simply. This included their sex life; and I think it assures us that there can be no such fundamental physical disharmony in the human organism as the great Russian scientist thought he had discovered. Is it not a fact that throughout nature a superfluity of any kind of energy or product may be a source of happiness, rather than of distress? Consider the singing of the birds! Or consider nature's impulse to cover a field with useless plants, and how by a little cunning, we are able to turn it into a harvest for our own use! In the life of our bodies one may show the same thing again and again. We have within us the possibility of and the impulse toward more muscular activity than our survival makes necessary; but we do not regard this additional energy as a curse of nature, and a peril to our lives--we turn out and play baseball. We have an impulse to see more than is necessary, so we climb mountains, or go traveling. We have an impulse to hear more, so we go to a concert. We have an impulse to think more, so we play chess, or whist, or write books and accumulate libraries. Never do we think of these activities as signs of an irrevocable blunder on the part of nature.